There was no further protest.
His officers turned and relayed the order through the voice tubes and blinking lamps. Gun crews roared in unison, their movements flawless despite the rolling deck. The Resolute's main batteries, six heavy gunners and two experimental tri-barrel ether cannons, opened fire at full spread. The air ignited with thunder. Shockwaves rippled across the sea as shells and firelight rained down upon the Kraken.
Aboard the Aegis, grappling lines were already deployed. Crewmen hauled wounded soldiers from the sea, those hurled from the Venture's decks or torn loose by the monster's wrath. Others, less fortunate, drifted among wreckage or fell below the waves still locked in combat with Deepkin attackers.
And still the Kraken fought on, screaming through the storm, ancient and furious.
Taar raised his greatsword high, and in answer, it burst into flame, not the pale flicker of a conjured torch, but a roaring inferno that bled heat into the very storm. The blade's alchemical circuits pulsed to life, glowing a deep red as fire licked along the edge like a beast awakening in hunger.
While Dominion mages were trained in the Six Disciplines, knights like Taar walked a different path. Denied the deeper mysteries of sorcery, they honed their bodies through brutal conditioning and martial schools that channeled elemental cantrips into physical art, techniques dismissed by proper thaumaturges as "crude" or "impure." But none could deny their battlefield worth.
Ser Hardron used a thunder type art. Mars, lean and quick, used a sound type; his blade hummed with vibration, each strike vibrating bones and armor with unrelenting resonance. But Taar's affinity was fire. His technique was not forged for elegance. It was built to devour.
A guttural cry escaped his lips as he strode through the melee, his flaming blade cutting arcs through rain and blood. Two Deepkin leapt from the rigging to intercept him, twisted creatures with reef-grown armor and bone spears. Taar didn't break stride. The first fell in a blur of steel and fire, the second caught a backhand sweep that cleaved through torso and coral plate alike.
The deck behind him exploded in sparks as the Resolute's gunners kept up their barrage, but Taar's focus narrowed to the beast.
He reached the ship's prow just as the Kraken surged upward again, a wall of muscle and scale rising from the sea's depths. Without hesitation, he sprinted forward and launched himself from the edge of the deck.
In midair, he twisted and brought the sword down with both hands, burying it into the monster's flesh just below a secondary eye. Flame erupted outward in a shockwave, searing into thick hide. The Kraken let out a bellow that shook the air and sea alike, and then it dove.
Taar was dragged down with it.
Water closed over him like a vise. The crushing pressure hit instantly, a thunderous silence swallowing his ears. The shock forced his grip loose, the greatsword slipping from his hands and vanishing into the black below. He kicked hard, trying to break free, but a tentacle lashed around his ankle, tightening like a vice. The Kraken meant to drown him, to crush his lungs and shatter his bones at depth.
He did not panic.
From a hidden sheath in his greave, Taar drew a short auxiliary blade. It ignited underwater with a flick of thought, a flare of superheated light hissing against the cold sea.
With one clean stroke, he severed the tentacle. The creature's blood, thick and luminous, spread like ink through the water.
The Kraken turned. It circled him in the gloom, one massive eye glowing like a lantern in the abyss.
Taar reached for his greatsword, calling to it with every ounce of focus, and it came. Pulled by the link of rune and will, the flaming blade tore upward from the dark and into his grasp. The moment it hit his palm, it ignited again, brighter and hotter than before.
The Kraken lunged.
He didn't flee.
He surged forward and, with a shout that boiled the water around him, drove the flaming greatsword into the beast's eye.
The explosion tore the sea open. A thunderous burst of steam, blood, and shattered energy blasted upward, the surface rupturing in a geyser that lit the sky with fire.
Above, the fleet watched as the ocean itself screamed.
The sea hissed and frothed, and then, through the smoke and spray, a figure emerged.
Rear Admiral Eresk Taar broke the surface with a ragged gasp, firelight gleaming off his scorched armor as he gripped the edge of a shattered boarding plank. A moment of silence swept across the Resolute's deck. Then the cheers erupted.
A chorus of relief and triumph rose from the crew, battered but unbroken. The Deepkin were retreating, melting back into the depths like shadows undone by sunrise. And the Kraken had been grievously wounded. It reeled beneath the waves, retreating into the abyss to nurse its wounds in slumber. It would not surface again for a long while.
Commodore Wiggans, soaked to the bone and mud-streaked from the lower decks, leaned over the railing and extended a hand. Taar took it, and with the help of two deckhands, he was hauled aboard, collapsing to one knee as his greatsword thudded heavily onto the deck beside him.
"Welcome back, sir," Wiggans said, breathless but smiling grimly.
Taar nodded, still catching his breath, water cascading off his armor in streams. He released his grip on the blade. It clattered to the deck, its flame guttered out. "Report."
Wiggans straightened. "High casualties, Admiral. Still awaiting census from all decks. Resolute's taken damage, stern armor's torn, starboard cannon rail's warped but she'll hold. The Aegis reports no serious injuries or hull breaches." He paused grimly. "The Venture, though… she's barely afloat. Keel's cracked, rudder gone. She'll need heavy repairs."
Taar pushed himself to his feet. "Plot a course for Port Lira." His voice was steady again, iron returning to his spine as he strode toward the bridge.
Wiggans followed at his heel. "Sir," he said, voice more measured now, "a raven arrived while you were below. From Providence Isle."
He held out a small canister, the Sanctuary seal still intact, pressed in wax the color of dried blood.
Taar took it with a sigh, wiping seawater from his brow as he cracked the seal and unfolded the heavy parchment within. The ink had run slightly from the humidity, but the message was clear.
Wiggans watched in silence as his Admiral read it once, then again. The letter bore the insignia of the Knight Inquisition, and it was signed by none other than Grandmaster Velden, second only to the Speaker of the Sanctuary itself. Few messages came from higher.
Sorel.
The name leapt from the page like a blade through fog. She'd been seen, weeks ago, in Yelich. Hunting an unnamed party of interest, possibly even within Dominion borders now. The Inquisition was requesting Taar's involvement.
Taar folded the letter slowly, lips pressed thin.
Sorel… that name clawed up old memories from the dark. A automaton knight of legendary status, and his equal in skill, perhaps even his better.
His thoughts, unbidden, drifted to Modred, the last God-Emperor of Malkuth and the end of his reign.
He remembered the fall vividly. The throne city engulfed in eldritch flame. The skies torn open by leystorms. It had taken every archmage from the Vassal Nations and beyond to bring Modred down, and even then, only just. That one man had defied entire armies. And when he fell, he dragged half the old world with him.
The fall of House Dehmohseni had been inevitable. Drenthyr, their last Elder Wyrm, had vanished years before. The blood itself had thinned to a trickle. Modred and his two sisters, one of whom he had married, were the last. It was the weakest the imperial line had ever been.
And still, at its lowest, it had been stronger than nearly all of Malkuth combined.
Now, if the Grandmaster's message was to be believed, Sorel, a surviving loyalist had resurfaced, and was hunting a mysterious group that had crossed into Dominion territory. The Inquisition needed to now why, so they had come to him.
Taar stared out across the sea, where the Kraken's blood still swirled, and the sky rumbled with distant thunder.
Wiggans raised an eyebrow. "Sir?"
"Nothing," Taar said, turning toward the command deck.